New dispute flares on postwar plans

The Pentagon is blocking US State Department involvement in forming a new Iraqi authority as part of a bitter dispute within the Bush Administration that threatens to leave postwar plans in disarray.

A bureaucratic struggle is intensifying in Washington and in the Kuwaiti headquarters of the Pentagon's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), effectively an Iraqi administration in waiting.

The Pentagon intends to establish 23 cabinet ministries, each headed by an Iraqi but supported by American technical advisers. It wants to limit a UN role to humanitarian aid.

Lieutenant-General Jay Garner is in charge of the ORHA and is due to become the de facto governor of postwar Iraq. The White House wants power to shift to an interim Iraqi authority within weeks of victory and the Pentagon aims to install as its leader pending elections Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the umbrella Iraqi National Congress - and a man who is distrusted by the State Department.

US diplomats believe the Pentagon is underestimating the difficulties of creating a new democracy in the Middle East. Doug Feith, the number three official at the Pentagon and the man overseeing postwar plans from Washington, is vilified in the State Department as a hardline ideologue. But he is close to US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and has won the loyalty of General Garner.");document.write("

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He is resisting attempts by US Secretary of State Colin Powell and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to secure UN oversight of a postwar Iraqi government.

Mr Rumsfeld has vetoed postwar roles for eight current and former State Department officials, angering the department. But Pentagon officials, who argue that the State Department never wanted "regime change", are determined to prevent their postwar plans being diluted.

Iraqi opposition groups say that the infighting is threatening to undermine the reconstruction of the country. "This is Washington politics at its dirtiest. You've got representatives of all the different agencies and everybody wants their guy to be on top. No one trusts anyone," one source said.

- Telegraph, Paul Daley

THE US PLAN

General Jay Garner's transitional government-in-waiting has started to shape the agenda:

- The White House wants power to shift to an interim Iraqi authority within weeks of victory.

- The Pentagon aims to install as leader pending elections Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the umbrella Iraqi National Congress.

- Iraq's 23 government ministries would be taken over, with a key US adviser supervising work along with Iraqi exiles.

- Experts from the US Treasury are deciding how best to scrap the Iraqi currency and replace it, at least temporarily, with the US dollar.

- A group of Iraqi exiles working with Garner has formed the "indigenous media group" to reinvent Iraqi television, radio and newspapers.